Infrastructure is the backbone of economic activity. It facilitates delivery of services such as education, health, sanitation, transport, communication, electricity, clean water and many others.

Government contributes around 40% to SA's overall infrastructure investment and has identified infrastructure development as a catalyst for accelerated economic growth and social development.

Notwithstanding budget increases over the years, delivery of public infrastructure remains dogged by budgets under-spending, poor planning, cost overruns, quality issues and sometimes project failure, among others. There are concerted efforts to build greater delivery efficiency in the public sector. This is at the forefront of the cidb mandate.

There are various cidb tools and guidelines available to assist the public sector to build better infrastructure delivery capacity.

Guidelines for infrastructure delivery:

The Infrastructure Delivery Management Systems (IDMS)

Standards for Gateway Reviews

National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy (NIMS)

Guidelines for Labour-intensive Construction Methods

Plans are afoot to build infrastructure delivery training into the curricula for universities and Government training providers, based on these instruments. This initiative was successfully piloted with the University of Pretoria.